The Header Spotlight segment is a way to deliver some information about the specific Headers and to highlight their strengths and weaknesses.
Today, we'll be covering the Archer Header.
What game would be complete without the Archer Archetype. Many have suffered through this being just another fighting style in a game where other styles are superior, but no more! In our game, the Archer was designed as an absolute glass cannon, and a skilled archer is going to require some attention, or they're going to devastate fighter lines.
Currently, all Bows in WAR Accelerant are represented by boffer bows and packet archery. For differentiation between packets, we require streamers on the arrows, but these do not have to be very long or unwieldy - 3" should be sufficient to identify streamer packets but not long enough to tangle. Each archer gets a free quiver of 20 arrows (no tags), and it takes 60 seconds of roleplay to refill the quiver (unless you use your skill). You can only use your own arrows, and you can't carry multiple quivers - the goal is that archers cannot put out sustained damage.
All that aside, the Archer probably has the best damage output of any header in the game. The Steady Aim skill is a high risk, high reward skill offering a possible 10 damage for 1 attribute! But with all that damage comes the downside that this header offers no real defense, other than Vigor and Armor.
Good Header Combinations: Acrobat (Lots of Defensive Skills), Warrior (Good all around skills for fighter types)
Pro: If you're good with packets and you want to do damage, Archer is really the way to go. As mentioned before, no Header puts out as much damage. Also great for people who don't like to get up close and personal.
Con: An Archer is fairly fragile, and without the support of others, Archers probably won't last very long on the field, especially against an enemy that counts arrows.
If you were playing an Archer, what Headers would you like your partner/team to have? Let us know in the comments!
Today, we'll be covering the Archer Header.
What game would be complete without the Archer Archetype. Many have suffered through this being just another fighting style in a game where other styles are superior, but no more! In our game, the Archer was designed as an absolute glass cannon, and a skilled archer is going to require some attention, or they're going to devastate fighter lines.
Currently, all Bows in WAR Accelerant are represented by boffer bows and packet archery. For differentiation between packets, we require streamers on the arrows, but these do not have to be very long or unwieldy - 3" should be sufficient to identify streamer packets but not long enough to tangle. Each archer gets a free quiver of 20 arrows (no tags), and it takes 60 seconds of roleplay to refill the quiver (unless you use your skill). You can only use your own arrows, and you can't carry multiple quivers - the goal is that archers cannot put out sustained damage.
All that aside, the Archer probably has the best damage output of any header in the game. The Steady Aim skill is a high risk, high reward skill offering a possible 10 damage for 1 attribute! But with all that damage comes the downside that this header offers no real defense, other than Vigor and Armor.
Good Header Combinations: Acrobat (Lots of Defensive Skills), Warrior (Good all around skills for fighter types)
Pro: If you're good with packets and you want to do damage, Archer is really the way to go. As mentioned before, no Header puts out as much damage. Also great for people who don't like to get up close and personal.
Con: An Archer is fairly fragile, and without the support of others, Archers probably won't last very long on the field, especially against an enemy that counts arrows.
If you were playing an Archer, what Headers would you like your partner/team to have? Let us know in the comments!
Glass cannon ftw. What do you think about enchanter as a combo to grant yourself some protectives?
ReplyDeleteI have always used a bow as one of my characters. I don't plan to take enchanter as I stand behind people. I was thinking Acrobat.
ReplyDeleteArcher/Warrior around the 70-80 CP mark is pretty tough.
ReplyDelete9 Vitality, 4 Armor, take close combat so you can parry. Do decent damage with sword and better with bow.
From warrior header you get some purges and if human you can pick up more purges form scalawag or storm mage.
2 Archer/Warriors and a Healer could be brutal as a party composition. A shield user to pivot around is always nice though.
Sounds like a sick build, Mark!
ReplyDeleteI will note though, that you can only benefit from the Vigor skill from a single header, so your max vitality is going to be 6. But 6 vitality 4 armor is still makes for a tough son of a...
Ya, Mark, that's actually the exact combo I was thinking. And I have just around that CP.
ReplyDeleteBut Bill...I want all the VITALITY!!!! but fair enough.
ReplyDeleteWell Jen it's official, you're rolling with us now :P
My experience being an archer in a similar game is a bit mixed. What I've decided is that it is a really fun skill set but it is badly suited for certain situations. It would be difficult to play with archery as the sole source of combat damage, but I have seen some people do it. But it seems to work out much better either as a complementary skill, or as a main combat style with some other means of fighting to fall back on in situations where archery is difficult or not well suited.
ReplyDeleteThe Achilles heel of archery is packet management. The advantage to archery is that is gives you a stat free way to dealing a good amount of packet delivered damage over time, and you can use stats for quick bursts of high damage and some effects. But this comes at the cost of burning through piles of packets.
Archery burns through packets a lot faster than offensive spell casting. There are a lot of situations or battles where packet retrieval is going to be difficult or impossible. Bad weather, snow, darkness, moving battles and similar scenarios come up a lot. In these cases you may not be able to easily retrieve your arrows, and if the battle last long enough you might find yourself with nothing to shoot. If you don’t have another weapon style or spells to fall back on you could be out of luck.
But there are a lot of fight scenarios where archery is highly advantageous. The daytime good weather field battle and the long duration indoor mod are two of them. What has worked well for me has been to take a little bit of archery to complement main skills (mainly healing, but with a bit of offensive casting and sword work). This way when I see a fight coming up that suits archery I bring my bow, otherwise I leave it behind and go with other stuff.